Mickeyduck's machines
Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 1:26 pm
Well I've decided maybe I'd start throwing the occasional thing in this section in case it helps anyone later. Or in case anyone throws good ideas my way - cos there's a lot of folk on this forum with a lot of good valuable knowledge. And keeping these wicked wee cars going is half the point of this forum and club.
I bought my first AW because my daily driver back then was costing me $120 a week for gas just to get to work and back. That was about 10 years ago, before the price of gas started going up something horrible! It's well over twice the price today. Here's the beastie I drove back then. Engine modded to Bathurst XU1 spec except it was running a Holley as I never did get around to fitting the triple carbs. Went real well (0-100kmh in about 6 seconds, top speed about 140mph = about 220kmh) but man was it thirsty:
I needed to find a cheaper way of getting to work and back but I didn't want to settle into anything too boring. Jappas made sense for the sake of fuel efficiency and reliability. I'd have bought a bike cos I used to love the things but these days I reckon the Auckland drivers are too crazy and I have a family to live for now eh. This was my ride just before I got married:
Anyway I went looking for a reasonable Jap car. Took an AW for a test drive, put it around a corner and couldn't stop grinning. Bloody go-kart. Sweet. And right away my gas bill dropped to $30 a week. A quarter of the fuel...! Here's the Blu-2 my first MR2, a J-spec '85 auto NA tin-top (if you ever get an auto NA be sure to convert it to manual cos unlike the auto SC they are real slow off the mark.)
The Blu-2 got me to work and back for about 5 years and proved to be a reliable and cost effective means of daily transport. In addition it always put a smile on my dial and added a thing to look forward to where the daily grind was concerned. If you have to commute, do it in something that's fun to drive as well as economical right?
About the only thing that ever went wrong with the Blu-2 was the fuel pump died. Thankfully it did so after being parked in the car park at work. Simply wouldn't start up. Beats crapping out half way across an intersection! I went to a mate's workshop to drop out the tank and replace the pump. Unfortunately he missed one of the weeny breather hoses when hooking things back up. The car caught fire as I pulled into the underground car park at work next to my boss' $150,000 X5 Beamer. A wee jet of fuel had spurted out of the tube and hit the exhaust as I came around the last corner. As I parked it up I noticed smoke coming out of the engine lid. Opened her up and there's a wee ball of flame under the engine. Emptied my weeny extinguisher but still there was fire. I raced up 4 stories, grabbed the server room extinguisher, raced back down and after jacking up the rear of the car I managed to put out the fire - basically the plastic under-body trays were alight. Real hard to put out, that plastic stuff.
Managed to rip off all the burnt bits and replace them, and the old thing continued to do me well for some time thereafter.
Getting involved with the club and going on runs meant I really needed another MR2 as well. That way I could drive one with one son as passenger, and my wife Michelle could drive the other with the other lad. So I bought another AW. Also automatic but this time a supercharged 1987 T-top. MUCH faster off the line eh.
No no hang on a sec, that ain't right. Try this:
Maybe a year after buying the T-top I discovered some nasty rust in the Blu-2's passenger side B-pillar so I parked it up. Ripping things apart revealed much worse rust than I'd imagined, hiding under the rubbers and the plastic etc. So I stripper and wrecked her and sent her off to the crushers.
Here's documentation of the rust for the reference of anyone looking to buy an AW, so you know where to look:
http://mr2.org.nz/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1&page=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bye-bye Blu-2.
The T-top beastie proved a bit more problematic than the Blu-2 but I love the thing. Much quicker than the NA being both supercharged and having an overboost pulley (gave better than 14lb boost on the gauge). Cruising around with the lid off in summer's a buzz too. A couple of stories for you...
One of the first things ever happened was I'm driving home at night on the motorway when there's an almighty bang and a huge cloud of white stuff in my rear vision mirror. I slap the shift lever forward into neutral and pull over to the shoulder as fast as I can. Throw open the engine lid and woah...! Huge cloud of steam coming out, the thing's boiled over. Belts have gone, not there anymore. In fact the crank pulley is half way off...!!! Turns out that when someone had fitted the overboost crank pulley they'd not got the keyway lined up right and it had munted itself badly as they forced the pulley on by just doing up the retaining bolt. Muppets. So as I'm driving it the crank pulley had slipped around on the crank and undone itself... After a tow home and a bit of work she was all good again though.
Another thing that went wrong with the T-top was the front fuse box. One day it simply caught fire. Turns out that the wee wiper-washer fluid tubes have a T-junction right over the fuse box and it was dripping. The fuse box didn't have a lid so the drips had been landing on the fuse holders, one of which eventually corroded, and the increased resistance made it get way hot and catch fire. As the fuse box is kinda knitted into the loom I've not replaced it, but instead simply rejigged things so the destroyed fuse holder is kinda fudged back together using spade connectors. Works fine, never been a problem since. But one day I oughtta try to swap out the fuse box...
The T-top's body is pretty sound except the front bumper iron is totally rotten. I have a new replacement but have yet to fit it. Really want to find a new outer skin first as well, and decent condition brackets for under the bumper (might need to make them). Plus the lip is in about 6 pieces and held together with maybe 100 layers of duct tape. If it wasn't for the ultra-low suspension I'd be tempted to fit an aerotech lip. But not when they're made of figlass, it'd last all of 5 minutes.
I put the T-top around Hampton Downs a couple of years ago. It was a lot of fun and went real well...
http://mr2.org.nz/phpbb3/viewtopic.php? ... s&start=64" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Almost at the end of the day as I hurtled over the pit straight hump at 180kmh, plunging down into the first hard right where the track drops right away from under you, I glanced in my mirror to suss where that GTR Skyline had got too. And all I could see (again) was white. Meh. Bloody thing's boiling again! Gary from Playday thought I'd caught fire and came whizzing around in his truck but thankfully his extinguisher wasn't required. Just a tow back to the pits. Waited for the old girl to cool down then topped her back up, bled the coolant and trundled off home. No worries...
But why the blazes doe it keep doing this? She'd boiled on us when we took two 2's north to Russel as well. Bah. Something ain't right there eh.
Oh - one other crazy thing: after Hamptons the headlights refuse to retract. My boss said I'd scared the old thing too much and she was stuck with eyes wide in fright. --> Ha ha! I've tried several retractor relays that all work fine in my other AW so maybe it's corrosion in the pins in the loom's plug or something? I'll sort it one day but have simply wound the lights down by hand for the last couple of years.
The T-top did a really nasty boil on us coming back from a run about a year ago so she's now parked up in the shed while I gradually pull it to bits to determine if it's a blown head gasket. Hey, she's WAY too much fun to give up on eh. My oldest boy's nearly old enough to drive now and he can out-pace me in go-karts so might end up being his wee project yet...
There's an amazing number of things to remove if you're trying to get the head of a 4AGZE. I should've pulled the engine out. LOL.
And that's only got me this far:
Too good a car to give up on eh. Done me well as a daily driver for nearly 5 years as well as given me a LOT of enjoyment. Anything that can add a smile every time you go near it is worth having.
I love its paint job too, especially since I did the roof black and swapped the wing mirrors for black ones so they kinda vanish... I fitted grey and black cloth seats cos I like the looks of them with the car's paint job and I find them more comfy than the velour ones. And I really love those mags, even if they are Mazda-Speed and a bit scruffy. Note the reflective stuff I added to the centre caps so I'd not get T-boned at night so easily... Car's jacked right up in this shot BTW.
Here's to getting the T-top going again sometime. Love it.
I bought my first AW because my daily driver back then was costing me $120 a week for gas just to get to work and back. That was about 10 years ago, before the price of gas started going up something horrible! It's well over twice the price today. Here's the beastie I drove back then. Engine modded to Bathurst XU1 spec except it was running a Holley as I never did get around to fitting the triple carbs. Went real well (0-100kmh in about 6 seconds, top speed about 140mph = about 220kmh) but man was it thirsty:
I needed to find a cheaper way of getting to work and back but I didn't want to settle into anything too boring. Jappas made sense for the sake of fuel efficiency and reliability. I'd have bought a bike cos I used to love the things but these days I reckon the Auckland drivers are too crazy and I have a family to live for now eh. This was my ride just before I got married:
Anyway I went looking for a reasonable Jap car. Took an AW for a test drive, put it around a corner and couldn't stop grinning. Bloody go-kart. Sweet. And right away my gas bill dropped to $30 a week. A quarter of the fuel...! Here's the Blu-2 my first MR2, a J-spec '85 auto NA tin-top (if you ever get an auto NA be sure to convert it to manual cos unlike the auto SC they are real slow off the mark.)
The Blu-2 got me to work and back for about 5 years and proved to be a reliable and cost effective means of daily transport. In addition it always put a smile on my dial and added a thing to look forward to where the daily grind was concerned. If you have to commute, do it in something that's fun to drive as well as economical right?
About the only thing that ever went wrong with the Blu-2 was the fuel pump died. Thankfully it did so after being parked in the car park at work. Simply wouldn't start up. Beats crapping out half way across an intersection! I went to a mate's workshop to drop out the tank and replace the pump. Unfortunately he missed one of the weeny breather hoses when hooking things back up. The car caught fire as I pulled into the underground car park at work next to my boss' $150,000 X5 Beamer. A wee jet of fuel had spurted out of the tube and hit the exhaust as I came around the last corner. As I parked it up I noticed smoke coming out of the engine lid. Opened her up and there's a wee ball of flame under the engine. Emptied my weeny extinguisher but still there was fire. I raced up 4 stories, grabbed the server room extinguisher, raced back down and after jacking up the rear of the car I managed to put out the fire - basically the plastic under-body trays were alight. Real hard to put out, that plastic stuff.
Managed to rip off all the burnt bits and replace them, and the old thing continued to do me well for some time thereafter.
Getting involved with the club and going on runs meant I really needed another MR2 as well. That way I could drive one with one son as passenger, and my wife Michelle could drive the other with the other lad. So I bought another AW. Also automatic but this time a supercharged 1987 T-top. MUCH faster off the line eh.
No no hang on a sec, that ain't right. Try this:
Maybe a year after buying the T-top I discovered some nasty rust in the Blu-2's passenger side B-pillar so I parked it up. Ripping things apart revealed much worse rust than I'd imagined, hiding under the rubbers and the plastic etc. So I stripper and wrecked her and sent her off to the crushers.
Here's documentation of the rust for the reference of anyone looking to buy an AW, so you know where to look:
http://mr2.org.nz/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1&page=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bye-bye Blu-2.
The T-top beastie proved a bit more problematic than the Blu-2 but I love the thing. Much quicker than the NA being both supercharged and having an overboost pulley (gave better than 14lb boost on the gauge). Cruising around with the lid off in summer's a buzz too. A couple of stories for you...
One of the first things ever happened was I'm driving home at night on the motorway when there's an almighty bang and a huge cloud of white stuff in my rear vision mirror. I slap the shift lever forward into neutral and pull over to the shoulder as fast as I can. Throw open the engine lid and woah...! Huge cloud of steam coming out, the thing's boiled over. Belts have gone, not there anymore. In fact the crank pulley is half way off...!!! Turns out that when someone had fitted the overboost crank pulley they'd not got the keyway lined up right and it had munted itself badly as they forced the pulley on by just doing up the retaining bolt. Muppets. So as I'm driving it the crank pulley had slipped around on the crank and undone itself... After a tow home and a bit of work she was all good again though.
Another thing that went wrong with the T-top was the front fuse box. One day it simply caught fire. Turns out that the wee wiper-washer fluid tubes have a T-junction right over the fuse box and it was dripping. The fuse box didn't have a lid so the drips had been landing on the fuse holders, one of which eventually corroded, and the increased resistance made it get way hot and catch fire. As the fuse box is kinda knitted into the loom I've not replaced it, but instead simply rejigged things so the destroyed fuse holder is kinda fudged back together using spade connectors. Works fine, never been a problem since. But one day I oughtta try to swap out the fuse box...
The T-top's body is pretty sound except the front bumper iron is totally rotten. I have a new replacement but have yet to fit it. Really want to find a new outer skin first as well, and decent condition brackets for under the bumper (might need to make them). Plus the lip is in about 6 pieces and held together with maybe 100 layers of duct tape. If it wasn't for the ultra-low suspension I'd be tempted to fit an aerotech lip. But not when they're made of figlass, it'd last all of 5 minutes.
I put the T-top around Hampton Downs a couple of years ago. It was a lot of fun and went real well...
http://mr2.org.nz/phpbb3/viewtopic.php? ... s&start=64" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Almost at the end of the day as I hurtled over the pit straight hump at 180kmh, plunging down into the first hard right where the track drops right away from under you, I glanced in my mirror to suss where that GTR Skyline had got too. And all I could see (again) was white. Meh. Bloody thing's boiling again! Gary from Playday thought I'd caught fire and came whizzing around in his truck but thankfully his extinguisher wasn't required. Just a tow back to the pits. Waited for the old girl to cool down then topped her back up, bled the coolant and trundled off home. No worries...
But why the blazes doe it keep doing this? She'd boiled on us when we took two 2's north to Russel as well. Bah. Something ain't right there eh.
Oh - one other crazy thing: after Hamptons the headlights refuse to retract. My boss said I'd scared the old thing too much and she was stuck with eyes wide in fright. --> Ha ha! I've tried several retractor relays that all work fine in my other AW so maybe it's corrosion in the pins in the loom's plug or something? I'll sort it one day but have simply wound the lights down by hand for the last couple of years.
The T-top did a really nasty boil on us coming back from a run about a year ago so she's now parked up in the shed while I gradually pull it to bits to determine if it's a blown head gasket. Hey, she's WAY too much fun to give up on eh. My oldest boy's nearly old enough to drive now and he can out-pace me in go-karts so might end up being his wee project yet...
There's an amazing number of things to remove if you're trying to get the head of a 4AGZE. I should've pulled the engine out. LOL.
And that's only got me this far:
Too good a car to give up on eh. Done me well as a daily driver for nearly 5 years as well as given me a LOT of enjoyment. Anything that can add a smile every time you go near it is worth having.
I love its paint job too, especially since I did the roof black and swapped the wing mirrors for black ones so they kinda vanish... I fitted grey and black cloth seats cos I like the looks of them with the car's paint job and I find them more comfy than the velour ones. And I really love those mags, even if they are Mazda-Speed and a bit scruffy. Note the reflective stuff I added to the centre caps so I'd not get T-boned at night so easily... Car's jacked right up in this shot BTW.
Here's to getting the T-top going again sometime. Love it.